Re: DECAL: Examples #4: Interesting Sentences

On Mon, 17 Jan 2005 10:41:20 -0800, H. S. Teoh <hsteoh@...> wrote:
> Some notes of interest (this makes the post really long; does anyone
> actually read this stuff??):
Most of it, yes.

> Let's assume, for the sake of ease of interpretation, that this
> sentence was uttered during a conversation between four people: the
> speaker woman A who is the speaker's close friend, woman B who is the
> speaker's acquiantance, and a fourth person C.
>
> In scenario (1), the speaker is addressing person C, telling him that
> A (who is close to him and therefore referred to using an intimate
> pronoun) goes to person B's (who is referred to using a distant
> pronoun because she is only an acquiantance) house.
Could it not also mean that A goes to C's house? After all, I imagine
C would also be addressed with the distant pronoun set, since they're
not a close acquaintance. Or are there more than two classes of
pronouns in Eb.?

Though I suppose I could look this up myself.... *does so* ... looks like not.

> In fact, it doesn't matter who the speaker is addressing; he might as
> well address all three people at the same time with exactly the same
> words, and each of them would "hear" the appropriate version, (1),
> (2), or (3), of what he says to them.
Is that so. I would have thought that B and C would understand the
sentence the same way, since the distant pronouns could refer to
either of them -- with the result that the owner of the house is
ambiguous between B and C, as understood by either of them.

Cheers,
--
Philip Newton <philip.newton@...>
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